Circle Internet Financial Ltd., the consumer finance startup backed by investors including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Baidu Inc., will hire 100 people as it expands a newly acquired cryptocurrency exchange.

Circle Internet Financial Ltd., the consumer finance startup backed by investors including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Baidu Inc., will hire 100 people as it expands a newly acquired cryptocurrency exchange.

The Dublin-registered company, which began as a mobile-payments platform, is focused on improving operations, customer support and technology at Poloniex, the exchange it acquired last month. Circle will hire 25 to 35 people to grow its Asia operations, adding to a staff of about 10 in Hong Kong and mainland China, and set up teams in South Korea and Japan, co-founder Jeremy Allaire said in an interview.

The expansion adds to signs that cryptocurrency entrepreneurs are undaunted by increased regulatory scrutiny and a selloff in digital assets that cut Bitcoin’s value in half since mid-December. Allaire, who has lofty visions for the future of digital tokens, said that Circle will cooperate with authorities as the company expands globally.

“The long-term view is that every form of value on the planet will become a crypto token,” Allaire said in Hong Kong. “We want to offer more markets, more assets, we want to localize it, and launch it in more international markets and, critically, we need to work with the most important regulators,” he said, referring to Poloniex.

Circle is backed by $140 million in venture capital from investors such as Goldman, Baidu, and investment bank China International Capital Corp., according to its website. The company has no plans to raise additional funds for now and expects to be profitable for a second year, Allaire said.

Circle’s products include Circle Pay, a payment app; Circle Invest, a platform for investing in digital assets; and Circle Trade, which provides market-making services. The latter handles about $4 billion a month and plans to start supporting crypto trades in Asian currencies such as the Hong Kong and Singapore dollars, said Jack C. Liu, who joined Circle as managing director in January.